By Michael A. Harrison, Walter L. Ruzzo, Jeffrey D. Ullman
Communications of the ACM,
August 1976,
Vol. 19 No. 8, Pages 461-471
10.1145/360303.360333
Comments
A model of protection mechanisms in computing systems is presented and its appropriateness is argued. The “safety” problem for protection systems under this model is to determine in a given situation whether a subject can acquire a particular right to an object. In restricted cases, it can be shown that this problem is decidable, i.e. there is an algorithm to determine whether a system in a particular configuration is safe. In general, and under surprisingly weak assumptions, it cannot be decided if a situation is safe. Various implications of this fact are discussed.
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